Reboot
by OnceUponAMadameMayor
Summary: Who is the man outside Emma Swan's door, who claims that she's a savior and that her family's in danger? How does he know her family? And who are the people appearing in her dreams every night? These are all questions which Emma can't answer. But with the help of her son and his old storybook, and a pinch of magic, she can put together the puzzle of what happened once upon a time.
1. Chapter 1

**I can't deal with that midseason finale. I can't, I can't, I can't. I must write my own ending in the almost 82 days we have left to wait until we see our babies again. I'm sorry to all of my readers who want me to update Once Upon A Thunderstorm and the like, but this just needs to be done. This is present day stemming right from that terribly perfect, feels wrenching finale.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT. There would have been a serious Swan Queen kiss goodbye if I did.**

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"Moooom! Wake up quick!"

Emma's eyes shot open faster than a gunshot.

"Henry? Are you okay?" she shouted, her voice cracking with grogginess.

"Yeah, I'm fine," the boy's voice called. Emma exhaled in relief, and sank back against the pillow, attempting to slow her heart rate down.

"Mom, there's someone at the door for you. He says his name is..."

Henry paused, and Emma shoved the blankets off of her, straining to distinguish the low tones of the voice feeding her son information.

"Mom, he says his name is Killian. Killian Jones. Do you know him?"

Emma groaned and pushed herself out of bed, padding on bare feet across the cold floor. She hustled through the kitchen, swiping a phone from off of the countertop - which was covered in cinnamon, she'd have to clean that up. She brushed past Henry, who looked at her very confusedly, and after taking one look at the man loitering in the doorway, her pinched expression dropped into a glare and she stepped in front of Henry, who tried to peek around her to see the man.

"I told you to leave me alone," she ground out. Killian Jones grinned in a way that Emma guessed he intended to be endearing.

"I am persistent, if nothing else love," he responded easily, leaning against the doorframe in what Emma classified as typical sleaze style. She narrowed her eyes.  
"And besides, you didn't listen to me."

"Yeah, I don't listen to nutcases," she snapped. "Now get out, and stay out." She hefted the phone in her fist so it became visible to the man in the doorway.

Killian let out a dissatisfied sigh, his eyes darting to the phone. He pushed himself into a more respectable position.

"I need your help, Swan. Your family needs your help," he emphasized, his icy eyes searching her own. Emma rolled her eyes, careful not to shift her defensive stance. She could force the lunatic out like she had yesterday, but that would mean leaving Henry exposed. She couldn't chance him getting hurt by this guy who demanded she listen to his ranting. Emma didn't know what lengths the man would go to in order to get what he wanted - she had seen some pretty crazy stunts in the past and didn't particularly care to see one put into action this early in the morning, and this close to Henry.

"My family is fine," she answered sharply, glancing towards Henry over her shoulder, almost double checking to make sure he hadn't vanished into a poof of smoke or something. _But that would be ridiculous._

"Go to your room," she said under her breath, "and stay there until I come and get you, okay?"

Henry shook his head stubbornly.

"Mom, you've gotta at least listen to him. He knows your name," he argued. Emma sighed.

"Henry, anyone could know my name. It's in the phonebook."

"I know more than just your name, love," the man drawled. Emma glanced at him testily, raising her eyebrows, after sending Henry one more demanding look, which he ignored.

"Okay, 'Killian'," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "What else do you know?"

She crossed her arms in front of her plaid pajama clad chest, tapping her fingers against her arm expectantly.

"Call me Hook," the man corrected. "You never called me Killian before, it doesn't make sense for you to start now."

Emma growled under her breath.

"I don't know you; I never did," she sighed.

Hook rolled his eyes. "Yes you did. You just can't remember because of the curse."

Emma winced internally as she heard Henry's intake of breath at the word 'curse'. He was obsessed with some old book of fairy tales he had found at a consignment store a few months ago, and Emma had heard countless recanting of multiple stories, all which he kept altering to fit their family. Emma had never looked in the book herself, simply because Henry always had it.

"Yeah, can we get back to the 'what you know about me', so I can call the cops?" Emma snarked, cutting off what was sure to be an enormous rant from the boy behind her.

"Your mother and father were named David and Mary Nolan," Hook recounted, his forehead creased as if trying to remember.

"Yeah, anyone who reads the newspaper or has an internet connection could have known that," Emma alleged. "Is that it?"  
She pressed the nine button on the phone in warning.

The man's face took on a slightly more desperate look.

"No, I have more. You didn't know who your parents were until after they died, because they put you up for adoption."

Emma shrugged.

"You could have checked the databases or the obituaries. You've got one swing left, and then if you don't get out, I'm calling the cops." For good measure, she pressed the one button. Hook sucked in a breath.

"You almost gave up Henry when he was born, because you didn't think you could be a mother and you wanted to give him his best chance," he exhaled, his tight expression sagging.

The phone clattered to the ground, breaking apart into pieces of jagged plastic.

_How could he have known that? I never said any of that. Not out loud._

Henry looked up at Emma for validation, kneeling down and scooping the broken phone into his hands.

"Mom?" he questioned. "Is he right?"

Emma took a step towards Hook, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"How do you know that?" she demanded, her voice low. "I never said that to anyone. Especially not you."

The man had the nerve to grin. He knew he had won; Emma saw the expression on the psychos she dealt with daily.

"As it turns out, it seems to be an inherited line," he said, folding his arms- Emma's eyes flared at the sight of the glinting metal barb protruding from his grimy leather sleeve; was that an actual hook? She had assumed he referred to himself as Hook because of some cult thing, or pure insanity- behind his head. "Your mother said the very same thing to you when she gave you up."

"You knew my mother, then," Emma stated, disbelief tearing through her mind. This guy couldn't possibly have known her mother; he was what, in his twenties?

Hook shrugged.

"You could say that. I knew your father better."

Henry piped up, "What were they like? Were they real grandparent material, like the 'give you cookies and throw the baseball' kind of grandparents, or all mean and strict?"

Emma turned and scowled at Henry.

"Do _not_ talk to the scary hook guy," she hissed. Henry's eyebrows shot up indignantly.

"What? A kid's gotta know these things, Mom."

Emma's heart dropped a little; _she_ had never known those things.

Hook shrugged.

"I can't really judge on that, lad," he answered, ignoring the dagger-filled glare Emma was sending his way as his lips quirked up into a smirk. "You'll have to tell me what you think when you meet them."

Henry's eyes widened. "You mean-"

"They're dead," Emma cut in. "How the hell would he be able to meet them?"

Hook grinned.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you lass. They're alive. And they need your help...Savior."

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**Leave a review telling me your thoughts! My fanfiction writing is probably going to explode as a result of this hiatus and that torturous, beautiful episode. Fair warning.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow! I'm bowled over by the number of follows and subscriptions and reviews already! I love you guys, really, I do. This fandom is the bomb.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own OUAT. *sad sigh***

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"Get out."

"What?" both Hook and Henry exclaimed at once. Emma shoved at the leather clad man's chest with both palms, sending him soaring out into the hallway and slamming against the wall for the second time in two days.

"Stay away from me, and stay away from my son," she growled. "Crazy son of a bitch."

And with that, she slammed the door closed, without checking to see if she had actually injured the man. To be honest, she hoped she had.

"Mooom," Henry groaned. "What was that for?"

Emma marched him into the kitchen with her hand on his shoulder, and then trailed off to the side to wipe up all of the spilled cinnamon dusting the counter.

"I deal with enough crazies at work, I don't need to deal with one at home."

He wasn't a crazy, Mom!" Henry persisted, plopping down into one of the kitchen table chairs. "He knows something about your mom and dad! He knew stuff that you didn't even say out loud!"

Emma swept the warm colored dust into the palm of her cupped hands and made for the garbage can, where she dropped it in and let it fall like brown snow onto the white plastic.

"It's called 'a false sense of security', kid. I never really thought that stuff about giving you up and best chances. I just needed him to think he was in the clear so I could kick his ass out the door," Emma lied, the mistruth rolling off her tongue easily. Henry, however, would have none of that.

"So you broke our phone for nothing," he alleged testily. "Just so you could kick some 'crazy' out of our doorway."

Emma nodded dutifully as she turned to the dishes, scrubbing the empty cocoa mug out as casually as she could.

"Yup. Go hard or go home. Gotta convince 'em somehow. If breaking phones is the way to do it, than so be it."

Henry made a very dramatic grumbling sound in his throat.

"You're a terrible liar, Mom."

Emma rolled her eyes. She shut off the lukewarm water and dried her hands on the sides of her pajama shirt, and then pivoted towards Henry.

"Go get your homework so we can check it before school. Maybe I'll lie to you about the right answers and see how good your lie detector really is."

~o~  
The second the door had closed behind his work-bound mother, Henry abandoned his homework. Today, he wasn't going to get himself on the bus and suffer through seven whole hours of things he felt he had already learned. He had too much to think about and besides, his mom wouldn't find out if he skipped. He had mastered the ability of faking a falsetto to call himself in sick years ago.

What had that Hook-Killian guy called his mom, anyway? Savior? It rang a bell in Henry's mind, and he couldn't shake the notion that he'd seen that title before. And, he realized, pushing himself to his feet and practically flipping his chair over backwards, he could easily guess just where he'd seen it.

Dashing through the apartment, he barged into his room, grabbing the old story book out from under his pillow. **Once Upon A Time**, it read, the four painted words shimmering with a burnish that reminded Henry of candlesticks. He ran his fingers over the gold embossed words and the soft brown leather. He didn't know why, but the book reminded him of home - even when he was in his own house.

"Savior," he muttered to himself, flipping through the creamy pages."Where have I seen that? Savior, Savior, Savior."

~o~

"Kid, I'm home!" Emma called, kicking off her heavy boots into the foyer carelessly. She stretched her arms above her head and arched her back, sighing in relief as she felt a few joints pop with a satisfying crack back into complete place.

"Okay," came the distracted response. Emma's forehead creased slightly as she hung up her jacket on the hook - ugh, that reminded her of the nutjob outside the door this morning.

"How was school?" she asked, warily listening for a response while tossing her NYPD badge into her jacket's breast pocket.

"Fine."

Emma's brows pinched together in consternation. She poked her head out of the foyer and looked around the room for Henry.

"Something wrong? Is everything okay?" she questioned, taking in the sight of her son curled up on the couch, poring over his fairy tale book as if his life depended on it.

"Yeah, everything's fine," Henry answered, his voice distant and withdrawn. Emma didn't like that tone one bit; it reminded her of the time a few years previous that she had taken away one of Henry's toys as punishment, and he had decided to 'punish' her in return by screaming about how he hated her and threatening to run away until she gave it back. At any rate, that had worked and the toy had been returned in a matter of minutes.

Emma yanked her gun holster off, quickly removed the bullets from the magazine, and draped the belt onto the hooks as well, her stomach becoming quickly knotted like a five year old's shoelaces.

"Whatcha up to?" she asked, padding on blue-socked feet to lean over the side of the couch. Henry looked up at her consideringly, and Emma had only enough time to catch the words "queen" and "curse" scripted onto the current page of the tome before Henry caught her gaze and slammed it shut.

"I don't think you're ready," he said by way of explanation. Emma raised an eyebrow.

"Ready for what?" she asked. "An old book of stories?"

Henry looked at her seriously.

"They're not stories. They're real."

Emma snorted.

"That's crazy."

Henry shrugged, hugging the book to his chest.

"It might be crazy, but its true. Mom, I've been studying them ever since we got this book. They talk about our family. You know that, I've read you stories right out of the book! I just didn't fully realize how true it was until now!"

Emma crinkled her nose up.

"Yeah? Most kids make fairy tales fit their lives. Its just what kids do. I did it when I was your age."

Henry groaned.

"If you had just listened to Hook, you would have known that I'm right. He knew something about it, I could tell."

Emma exhaled irritably though her nose.

"I didn't listen to him because he was insane. You shouldn't listen to him either," she alleged.

"But Mom, your name is in the book! It says that you're the Savior, just like Hook said!" Henry argued. Emma scoffed.

"I'm not a Savior like in the books, Henry."

"But you even do it now, in real life as your job! It's part of the curse, making sure you always are the Savior!" Henry ranted. Emma groaned internally. _Not the damn curse thing again. _

"What curse?" She checked her watch. Maybe she should send Henry to bed soon; he was clearly sleep deprived. Henry took a deep breath, like he was about to jump into a pool, but Emma cut him off, pushing herself off the couch and of her leaning position.

"You know what, never mind. It's a school night, you need to get to bed."

Henry's eyes widened in complete shock.

"But Mom," he resisted, grabbing onto her arm. "You've gotta listen!"

Emma pulled Henry to his feet gently, so he stood on the couch looking down at her.

"Kid, you know I love you, but I can't deal with the fifty shades of curse psychobabble right now," she sighed, releasing his forearm and rubbing her temples as the pounding in her head increased. "Go brush your teeth and grab some shut eye."

Henry grumbled loudly and hopped down off the couch, the storybook tucked under his arm.

"Hold it, hold it," Emma said, extending her hand. "Hand it over."

Henry looked up at her with wide eyes.

"Hand what over?"

"The book." Emma almost laughed at the dumbfounded expression on her son's face. "You think I'm dumb or something? I know about book lights, kid, I wasn't born in medieval times."

Henry's lips twitched as he tried to resist, but in moments the guilty little smile of someone who had just been caught red handed made its way across his face. Emma smirked right back.

"Gimme."

Reluctantly, Henry plopped the book into her awaiting hand. She tucked it into the crook of her elbow and pulled him in for a one-armed hug.

"Night kid. Love you."

"Love you too, Mom."

And then he stood there, looking up at her expectantly. Emma raised an eyebrow.

"Henry?" she queried. Henry watched her innocently.

"Aren't you going to kiss me good night?" he requested, his eyes shining with a light that Emma deemed too good to be true. She narrowed her eyes.

"You made me stop doing that when you were eight," she reminded him. "You were pretty firm about how 'cool' kids don't get kissed good night by their moms,'" Henry shrugged his shoulders ambivalently.

"I've grown up a lot. Moms are cool now," he said by way of explanation. Emma looked at him curiously, her head tilted ever so slightly as she tried to make sense of what her almost-teenage son was doing. She pressed her lips gently to his forehead. For some reason, his face felt tense to her - like he was expecting something. Even as she drew back, his eyes were screwed up tightly like he was waiting for something to hit him. _That's weird. No more Swiss Miss for him. He's getting Yoohoo in the microwave from now on if this is how it's gonna be._

"I therefore pronounce you kissed good night," she announced. She gave him a little nudge in the back. "See you in the morning."

"See you in the morning," Henry sighed. He sounded disappointed as he trudged away down the darkened hallway towards his room.

_Should I be offended? Did I do something wrong? _

Emma readjusted the book under her arm and started off to her own bed, where she knew she would only too happily crash and sleep until her alarm blared the next morning. Then a page fell out of the book, fluttering to the floor with a high pitched sliding sound. Kneeling down, groaning under her breath as her sore legs protested the motion, Emma grabbed the paper, wincing slightly as the edge sliced the tip of her thumb and sent three drops of ruby splattering onto the snowy page, just barely missing the word 'true'. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze shifted to the center of the page, where shimmering onyx words proudly glistened under the bright lights of the apartment.

"...and when the Savior bestowed the True Love of a mother in the form of a Kiss upon the cursed Truest Believer, his golden heart reawakened from its still slumber and his eyes opened. A wave of light rippled like a pulse from the Savior and the Truest Believer, and with that, the oblivious townspeople remembered who they truly were, and who was to blame for all that had happened to them. The curse was broken, thanks to the help of True Love's Kiss," she read to herself under her breath, in a murmur.

Emma had to bite back a startled laugh. Had Henry really attempted to re enact this? Had he actually thought it would work?

_Well_, she thought, _now I have to fix his book or he's gonna think I got mad and attacked it like I did the toaster last month. _

She eyed the thick book and its many pages.

"And now I'm going to actually flip through this entire thing to glue one page back in, when I could be sleeping right now," she said aloud.

With a resigned sigh, she plopped down at the kitchen table and opened to the first page.

**Once upon a time, in a land far far away...**

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You like? Dislike? Love? Hate? Have any theories as to what might happen next? Leave me a review and let me know! I literally treasure every review I get. Adieu until tomorrow, ma cheries!


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi guys :D I'm sorry I haven't updated, I actually lost the chapter in the mess of my phone and was discouraged for a bit. But here you are, the next chapter of Reboot. I hope you enjoy it!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT. If I did, that would imply that I own this gosh darned hiatus and LET ME TELL YOU if I owned the hiatus...there would be no such thing as a mid-season hiatus.**

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_The young woman inhaled sharply, the relieved grin vanishing from her lips. She let out a cry of dismay, her dark eyes widening as her mother crushed the stable boy's heart into dust -dust!- right before her very eyes._

_"Mother!" she shouted as she rushed forward, her cape flying through the air with a desperate swish, to catch the stable boy as he dropped like a rock through water to the ground. The young woman watched in absolute horror, burning hot tears pooling in her eyes as she watched his own eyes - his beautiful, beautiful blue eyes - flickering blank and his face slackening. The understanding smile slid off of his lips, leaving way for the stiffness of death to converge on the body. The young woman's arms wrapped around the stable boy's sagging shoulders, his head resting in the crook of her arm like that of a baby's._

_"No, no, no, no, no," she whimpered, her stomach constricting viciously. Her breaths coming in short, panicked gasps, she crashed her lips to his, in the futile hope that maybe True Love's Kiss could restore what had been lost. It couldn't be too late, it wouldn't be too late; she refused to allow it. However when she pulled back to see the still startled, dead expression of the man she loved staring back at her, she turned to look up at her mother, who stood observing the mannerisms of her grieving daughter like it was some sort of dinner show - one that did not strike her fancy._

_"Why have you done this?!" the daughter shrieked, her voice breaking as the tears started to pour down her cheeks._

_"Love is weakness, Regina."_

_"Mother! Mother!"_

"Mom? Mom!"

Emma's eyes cracked open a sliver, her mind still swimming with crushed hearts and the haunted lover from the stables.

Who was that woman? Why did she register as familiar in Emma's mind? She knew that she had never met anyone who looked like the girl in her dream had - young, maybe seventeen or eighteen (Emma didn't deal with too many teenagers nowadays, save for miscreants she had to chase down) with long black curls. Black didn't seem like a good enough word for the girl in the stables' hair.

"Wha?" she croaked, lifting her head. Belatedly, she realized she had been using the thick, creamy vellum of the leather storybook as a pillow, her nose resting half an inch away from the illustration of the beautiful young woman, who stared out of the page with pure and utter betrayal in her dark eyes.

_ Squid ink. _

The term popped into Emma's mind unbidden. _That's the color of her hair. Squid ink._ Emma had never seen squid ink before (although she could probably name a few drugs with similar street names) but the word seemed to fit just right.

"You 'kay?"

Henry looked towards the hallway of which both of their bedrooms were located, and then back to her, a nervous expression on his sleep rumpled face.

"I think there's someone in your room."

Emma's eyes automatically went wide and she leapt to her feet, blinking violently in an attempt to clear her mind of all things sleep and mystical related.

"Did you see anything?" she hissed, making sure to keep her voice low. Sure, she supposed it could have been Henry's imagination. But Henry wasn't the type of kid to conjure up imaginary intruders, and Emma...she couldn't explain it exactly, not even to herself in her own head, but she was on edge.

"There was a shadow in your room when I walked by," he muttered back, keeping his eye on the darkened hallway. "And you weren't in there, and I heard footsteps when the shadow walked."

Emma's stomach twisted strangely, a painful knot of irrational fear shooting through her veins. She had never been too fond of shadows - they had caused her too many nightmares as a child.

Her heart beat rapidly in her ears, a sound much akin to the sound of a horse's continuously escalating hoofbeats as she looked to Henry, her gaze intense and serious.

"Stay here," she ordered, "and don't move until I come back."

With that she took off, her sock-coated feet rustling against the cold wooden floor as she crept down the hallway, clenching her fist in preparation to throw a punch, since her gun was currently unlocked and unloaded and put away safely - therefore being no help whatsoever in the event that there really was a late night prowler. She was an idiot. This was her kid, and their safety on the line. How could she leave herself defenseless in the case of an intruder, like now? Emma vowed to herself that she was going to get some sort of baseball bat for the next late night rendezvous with an unwelcome stranger.

She could see the entryway to her room now; the door was flung wide open as per usual and what she could see of the inside remained pitch black, as it should be. Emma paused and took a steadying, head clearing breath. Maybe she was overreacting, maybe Henry really had just imagined there to be someone in her room. Carefully she made her way into the doorway, and squinted into the darkness. Her heart stopped as her squinted eyes made out the tall, broad shouldered figure standing to the side of her bed that she tended to not use.

(She didn't know what made her leave the left side empty. All she knew was that it was never slept in, not by her nor Henry, and god forbid anyone else. It had never occurred to Emma to wonder why, but now she found herself morbidly curious, even in the midst of facing down a potentially dangerous prowler. She mentally slapped herself in the forehead.)

_Get yourself focused, Emma. Scary intruder guy in your bedroom. Geez._

The blonde dropped her right hand to her hip, her teeth clenched as she angled herself so that her left shoulder led as she entered the room.

"Whoever you are, I have a gun, and if you're not on your knees with your hands in the air in two seconds, you're a dead man," she said, her voice low and livid. Henry referred to this as her 'bad cop' voice on the rare occasions that he had heard it being used, and she sure as hell hoped her kid was accurate on the voice readings - because that was exactly the picture she wanted to paint for whatever asshole had wandered into her bedroom.

Said asshole turned slightly, to face her. Emma nudged the door open to allow more light from the hallway to flood into the room, hoping for a glimpse of an identifying feature - a face maybe, a tattoo, anything -, but the person raised their hands in the air in mock surrender, stepping back a pace and remaining hidden in the shadows.

"Good idea," Emma said, taking a few advancing steps into the room, her hand still on her completely gun-less hip. "So now you're going to tell me who you are, and why the hell you're in my house - in my bedroom. Got it?"

The figure shrugged their shoulders, as if ambivalent to Emma's command. Emma's eyebrows drew together momentarily in confusion - how was someone neutral to what she was putting down? - and then a loud crash sounded, successfully diverting Emma's attention and causing her to whirl towards the door, intruder and her psuedo gun forgotten.

_Dammit, Henry._

"Henry!" she called. "Are you okay?"

She heard a low chuckle as Henry's apologetic reassurance of his condition came floating through the air, and she pivoted on her socked heels as fast she could to face the apparently very amused prowler.

"You're not gonna be laughing when-" The threat died in her throat as she took in the completely vacant room, the open window, and the small rectangle on the bed. She charged for the window, sticking her head out. Emma's eyes intently scanned the fire escape, searching for any clue to who had just made a break for it through her bedroom window. Her vision snagged on a smear of black on her otherwise concrete-gray windowsill.

A small grin spread across her lips as she pinched the scrap of black leather between two fingers, examining it in the moonlight. Even from a distance, she could still smell the fermenting, curdled smell of an unwashed man who had evidently just been drinking - rum, from the syrupy undertone.

"Gotcha, 'Hook'."

She reached up with her free hand and pulled the window shut, taking care to lock it, and double lock it, and turned around to see Henry lingering in the doorway, his youthful face pinched.

"Was anyone in there?" he asked. Before Emma could respond, his observant eyes snapped to the rectangle shaped parcel left on Emma's always-unused pillow. "What's that?"

Emma chose to ignore the first question, instead jumping straight to the second. "I have no idea," she sighed, sinking down onto the bed. The section of the bed felt odd, too firm - if Emma didn't sleep on the other side of the bed, she would have thought that the two sides were two different mattresses altogether. She reached for the mysterious object, and her fingers grazed paper.

"A letter?" she murmured to herself. As if they had a mind of their own, her fingers started to pull back the flap of the envelope - and then she stopped.

"Well, go on Mom!" Henry urged. "Open it! What does it say?"

Emma set the letter down on her endtable with a conflicted huff.

"I'll find out tomorrow. I'm gonna take this down to the station, make sure it's safe," she decided, eyeing the blank, creamy letter - it looked and felt like the same paper from the fairytale book, Emma noted - with wariness. "I'll let you know then. Go to sleep, kid, it's been a long night."

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**I hope you enjoyed this chapter - tell me what you thought! Reviews make my day more than you know. Bye for now!**


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